IELTS Test Information FAQs

It takes time, practice and patience. It also depends on where you’re starting from – things like your mother tongue, motivation, previous language learning experience, background knowledge, learning styles, time available to study etc. Click here to find my detailed advice on how to improve each skill.

As I mentioned above, that depends on so many factors – your first language, your language learning background and ability, your motivation, your time availability, your study skills, the the quality and relevance of the materials you’re using to prepare and the level of expertise of your tutor. Your score can also vary depending on the test itself and whether you get questions that you are familiar with.

There is no specific time frame for increasing your score, but as a general rule, it can take up to 3 months of studying 6 hours a day and living in an English-speaking environment to increase by 0.5. Of course some people do it in less time, some people take longer.

A student recently asked me if it would be ok to memorise and re-use this sentence from a magazine: “Fast food is addictive. A number of studies have shown that eating junk food stimulates the reward response in our brain that makes us feel compelled to overeat. When we eat junk food, a spontaneous feeling of excitement results and blood sugar rockets.”

First of all, you will not be accused of plagiarism as examiners do not have time to check. But they are trained to recognise language that has been memorised. If you are lucky enough to get an exact question where you can use this memorised sentence, then you won’t lose points, but the rest of your essay will have to be of an equally high standard.

So my advice is to memorise ‘chunks’ of language that you can apply to any topic e.g. ‘A number of studies have shown that…’ and collocations e.g. ‘fast food is addictive’ but don’t try to memorize whole paragraphs like the one you showed above.

IELTS Reading Information (FAQs)

There are about 25 different question types that you need to practise and at least 28 different topics that you need to know about. I cover all the different types in all my posts, podcasts and YouTube videos. You need to go through them gradually, using my explanations to help you find the answers in the real test.

Yes absolutely. I would recommend it if your handwriting is not very clear! It’s also ok to use short versions of Days and Months e.g. FEB (February) WED (Wednesday) or 10/2 (or 2/10 or 10 Feb or Feb 10) instead of 10th of February.

Don’t try to change your accent – your accent is absolutely fine. There are many ways you can improve your pronunciation though – here are some ways you can do it quickly before the test and here are some ways you can do this over time.

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